Skinned
by SouthSideStory
Summary: Stripped down to nakedness and hard truths. Skinned. (Five stories grounded in the senses.) Lily/James, Remus/OC, Regulus/OC
1. Hearing

**Hearing**

For three years James has listened.

At first to insulting brushoffs to match his brash and public proposals. Later, gentle let-downs—a reward for his sincerity. But always clear. Always No, in every way the word can be said.

Evans's mouth has been a source of frustration since the day they met. Challenging, outspoken, unable to ever shut the hell up. But then he started to notice other things about her mouth. In History of Magic (was it fourth year or fifth?) he sat two seats down from Lily and watched her lips as she took notes. Perpetually chapped, full and pink. He found himself wondering what they would taste like. A new kind of frustration started then.

Her rejections are pushing a thousand days and his patience. And James is tired of listening.

So when she opens her mouth to speak, he meets those chapped lips with his own. He half expects Lily to pull away. Instead, she kisses him back, and it sounds remarkably like Yes.


	2. Taste

**Taste**

The new year is exactly three minutes old. In an alley behind the Blue Eel, Sirius celebrates with a twenty-something brunette, Diane or Deanna. She tastes like the pub smells: too much beer and cigarette smoke. Bobbed brown hair falls across her glassy eyes when she laughs, dancing away.

Why do women always do that? Pull when what they want is to be pushed. Run when what they mean is _chase me_.

She lets him press her against the brick wall. Lets him fuck her between two overflowing rubbish bins that stink of alcohol and emptied ashtrays. The weight of her hips is soft and heavy in his hands. Little whimpers slip between red-smudged lips, and between her legs everything is tight around him. Closed and close. More than he can take and his fingers slip. They fall onto the nearest trash can, her ass hitting the metal lid like a cymbal clash in the midst of other New Year's clangor, fireworks and drunken verses of "Auld Lang Syne." She does the rest, grasps his shirt and lifts herself against him. Slick flesh meeting between the gaps in their clothes. He supports himself on the pile of trash, the prick of broken glass biting into his palms.

When it's over the alley's stink becomes too much. Stomach lurching, he pulls away from the woman whose face is blurred. Bile rises hot and sour, and Sirius vomits out the last liquor 1977 had to offer him.

Coming back up, the taste is old and familiar. Nothing new at all.


	3. Sight

**Sight**

Watching her is his one selfish pleasure. He knows she is not fit for him. He has known it all his life, and yet Regulus finds his gaze lingering when it shouldn't. Everything else he'll sacrifice for the sake of duty, but not this.

In public, they're separated by the barrier of their respective friends, which never come into contact without friction. Alone, there are different walls between them. Common regrets and the weight of many things unsaid.

Distance tortures as much as it protects. He watches her. Hugging Potter after a match, tugging the messy ponytail she insists on wearing, flying over the pitch in the cool of early evening. He watches as the awkward lines of adolescence give way to soft curves and knows that he isn't the only one to have noticed this. Soon, someone will touch and taste where he can only look.

She is not ladylike. Too clumsy and too outspoken by far. There are whispers about the mother she never knew—some say a foreign Muggle her father bedded and abandoned. Her skin is not fair enough, her lineage too short. She is not graceful or noble or pure enough. She is not enough in any respect.

Except Regulus thinks that she would be enough for him.


	4. Smell

**Smell**

He can smell her. Strawberry hair, crisp clean cotton. And beneath the salt-damp hollow of her throat, there's the iron pulse of life.

The near full moon pulls at his body. Raw hunger in his belly, dry hot thirst in his mouth. Aching in his deepest flesh, the marrow of his bones. And another ache, different. Pleasure-pain that tightens low in his stomach, and lower. When he looks at her parted mouth and bare throat, begging to be touched, tasted—

Remus tears himself away, shaking, while the wolf beneath his skin sings for satisfaction. He watches her, so peaceful in sleep, breast rising and falling with slow breaths. She turns, a sleek lock of hair falling across her face. His fingers itch to push it back, to touch her cheek.

But he doesn't. Instead, Remus takes his book and leaves her there, returns to his bed upstairs. Between the cool sheets his skin feels hot and stretched too thin. Body and mind taut, barely contained. All he can think of is _her_.

"Remus?"

The voice is faint, almost lost in the darkness, but Remus knows that scent right away. Half a heartbeat of silence, then his bed hangings whisper open. She climbs in, on top of him, and pulls her nightdress over her head. Underneath there's nothing but her nakedness. A curtain of dark hair falls on either side of his face and her mouth presses warm and soft on his. Gently, she unbuttons his pajamas. Unwraps him from his clothing like a gift that deserves great care.

He should be embarrassed, guilty, ashamed for her to see his scars. But he isn't, and there are no scars. The moon is bright above their bodies, outlining every curve and hollow in silver shadow. It's winter, yet her skin smells of ripe fruit and summer heat, and Remus knows this is a dream. He knows because the moon is full, and he can touch her with human hands. He knows, and never wants to wake from it.


	5. Touch

**Touch**

She looks like a little girl when she sleeps. Legs drawn up to her chest, hands pressed together, sleek hair spread across the pillow. He brushes fair strands from her cheek and looks at her: lips slightly parted, delicate skin flushed. Avery presses his fingertips to her mouth and she mumbles something incoherent. Dream-words from the innocence of her slumber, landing warm and damp against his skin.

There's something perversely pleasing about screwing Regulus Black's fiancée right under the smug little shit's watch. But it's about more than that. He _likes_ her. This brat who's too spoiled to realize there are consequences for games like the one they're playing. He knows this too well, but he can't seem to let her go.

He turns his back to the sleeping girl. His fingers still burn from the contact, and he wonders if she might taste him on her skin in the morning. He wonders if Regulus will kiss her and never know whose touch he's erasing.


End file.
